A number of formats and/or standards have been developed for compression of video data. One such format for still pictures is known as the Joint Picture Expert Group (JPEG) video standard. According to that standard, if a set of pixels in a picture are all the same color, a truncated version of the data for that portion of the picture is transmitted.
There also exist both JPEG and Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG) formats for motion pictures. For example, MPEG layer 2 encodes or compresses video data so that complete image information frames are only transmitted periodically. In between, other frames are transmitted that contain only updated information. A prediction scheme adapts between frames. In this fashion, most of the data transmission effort comes from the frames containing complete image information, while the remaining frames contain only limited data.
In standard, classical computer animation, each complete frame of video including every single object in the frame is rendered to a conventional video data format. Thus, even though most objects remain stationary from image to image, they must still be recalculated to render an entire frame. While this is the best way to produce a high quality motion picture, it is a very lengthy process.
In that regard, performing computerized animation on conventional video output formats such as D1 (extremely high end component data format), or even in NTSC and PAL, or any other conventional raster-based video system requires extremely large quantities of calculations to "render" a full screen of a simulated image. Thereafter, the conventional video data format are typically compressed to the I, B and P frames of the MPEG layer 2 format.
However, for applications using MPEG video, especially low rate MPEG video, such as an interactive game on CD-ROM, it would be preferable if calculations could be simplified so that images could actually be rendered directly to the datastream for reconstruction at the destination. Thus, there exists a need for a method, system and product for direct rendering of video images to a compressed video data stream. Such a method, system and product would provide for rendering on demand, thereby eliminating the need to store huge amounts of asset pictures.